A Year In Review for 2011

It's hard to believe that another year is coming to an end. Just a few more days and the end of the world is upon us! Well, according to my wife (and Hollywood), the world is supposed to come to an end in 2012. To me it just feels like 1999 when everyone thought all computers would crash at midnight.

December is also one of my most favorite times of the year. We’re decorating trees, baking cookies, friends and family get to come over for a visit, and we finally have colder weather here in Atlanta.

Life has also been extremely busy here in CoffeeCup Land as well. Looking back over the year, we have really been able to create some amazing new programs and provide some awesome upgrades.

S-Drive:

We launched S-Drive, our own take on web hosting (though we try not to use that phrase as it really is so much more). We know you’ve read about it in our newsletters and forum posts, but many of you may not fully know what S-Drive is. We’ve incorporated our own hosting platform directly within our software to bypass all that complicated FTP stuff that is typically required when you publish your website. Using S-Drive, you just enter your CoffeeCup account information (the same user name and password you used when purchasing the software) into the program you are using. That’s it! The software takes care of the rest.

Here’s some examples to give you an idea of some of the services that S-Drive provides:

* Streams: Instant updates to your website from anywhere, including your mobile phone. Use it as a news ticker, a guestbook, or just as a personal blog.
* Storage: Your website’s files in the cloud. Use any browser—even at a friend’s house—to access the administrative side of your website and all of its content.
* Stats: Whether you’re looking for visitor stats for your Stream, Shop, or Forms, S-Drive’s got the info you need. Easy-to-understand statistics are complimentary.

Another big item we were able to release is our domains service. You can now purchase a domain name (your own .com, .net, or .org) straight from our website! One of the best reasons to use CoffeeCup for your full website needs is because we are your single point of contact. If you have any software or website issues, we’re your one-stop shop to help you out. No more tag-team between technical support and your hosting company. (We all know how frustrating that is!)

New Program releases:

Software releases were also a big part of our mission statement for the year. Early in the year we launched Web Image Studio (our own graphics editing program). We put a lot of work into this application to make graphic editing simple. Our goal was not to replace Photoshop but to make traditionally difficult tasks easy. This program was also created to to offer the ability to customize graphics found in our themes for Shopping Cart Creator, Visual Site Designer, and The HTML Editor.

Another little sleeper program we released was Power Post. This is a handy little program for managing and posting content to your Stream right from your desktop. It handles all your Streams simultaneously, and can even be used by a whole staff of people to manage one or more Streams. It’s got a pretty spiffy built-in image editor so you can tweak photos right before they go on the web, or refine previously posted ones.

This then leads us to the biggest release of the year: Web Form Builder! This release was probably one of our most successful releases of any program we have made—and for good reasons! We changed our approach to web form creation to develop a drag-n’-drop interface that couldn’t possibly be easier to use. It’s got 20 form elements (and counting) thanks to the awesome power of HTML5.

OS X has arrived!

OS X applications are here. Yes, we know this took a bit longer then we expected, but we think the wait is well worth it. In November, we released 3 beta programs for OS X: Web Image Studio, Web Form Builder, and the Web Editor.

You can now enjoy the same Web Image Studio and Web Form Builder found in Windows, but in a Mac interface. We created the Web Editor, a brand new code editing application, exclusively for OS X—and trust us, it’s good. These apps are just a taste of what’s to come as we are aiming to devote a lot more time to OS X app development.

Updates:

Now let’s not forget the updates. Direct FTP, Shopping Cart Creator, and Visual Site Designer all had many releases throughout 2011 adding many new features and functionality. One of the biggest new features was the integration with S-Drive. We also had upgrades to Sitemapper, Shopping Cart Designer, and our HTML Editor. And hey, the just-around-the-corner update to the HTML Editor features S-Drive integration, too. Just when you think these program can’t get any better, we make it happen.

Fun Activities

The annual Easter Egg hunt was a huge hit this year. I think some of you might still be seeing eggs in your sleep! So many people went egg hunting through our website that it almost brought our servers to its knees! We also had a record $50,000 of cash and prizes tucked away in every corner of our website. There were so may eggs on our website that we think we may have forgotten a few (or maybe that’s just the smell of a sandwich one of our technicians left in there while repairing the Egg Hunt damage).

Last, but not least, we sent off the year with another CoffeeCup tradition: The holiday gift giveaway. This year, everyone with an S-Drive account found a present in the Storage tab of their control panel on the morning of the 25th. A few lucky individuals were also given some pretty big gifts. We handed out a MacBook Air filled with all of our software, a red-hot Kindle Fire loaded with helpful handbooks, a couple high-res digital cameras, and of course, CoffeeCup SWAG. Real-life items or not, everyone got some great software and graphics to add some pizzazz to their websites—just for being part of the family!

Looking forward to 2012, we have many great things on the way: More OS X applications, updates to Shopping Cart Creator (we all know what you have been asking for), the HTML Editor will have a big face lift and connect to S-Drive, Web Form Builder will get loads of new features, and we have a multitude of enhancements coming for S-Drive. These are just a few of the many great things in store for all of you next year.

Well, that’s about it, or at least most of what I can remember. Don't forget to spread the good word about CoffeeCup on Facebook and Twitter!